In groups of ten, starting with the most recent polls, the average results for Labour are below.

These results show that in the past 7 months Labour has dropped approximately 10% in the polls, so their present approach is not working for them. Any suggestions?

Polls 1-10 - 28.5%

Polls 11-20 - 30.2%

Polls 21-30 - 34.5%

Polls 31-40 - 35.1%

Polls 41-50 - 32.7%

Polls 51-60 - 30.5%

Polls 61-70 - 36.4%

Polls 71-80 - 37.3%

Polls 81-90 - 38.2%

Polls 91-100 - 38.2%

Polls 101-110 - 37.5%

Polls 111-120 - 38.3%

Yes. Get Labour MPs to stop trying to remove Corbyn as leader-get them to stop briefing against him, stop treating him with the respect he's entitled to as leader, stop trying to expel his supporters-none of whom deserve to be expelled-from the party, and stop their pointless, vindictive efforts to erase those supporters and what they stand for from the party. Labour has nothing to gain from returning to its obsession with the nonexistent "Middle England" voter, an obsession which led the party to abandon working people, morally judge the poor for their poverty, suck up to the wealthy and become MORE militarist than the Tories. Labour never needed to do that in the past and it never needs to do that again.

Also, it's time for everyone to admit that Corbyn never EVER deserved to be accused of anti-Semitism or even of being soft on it. Labour doesn't have to adopt rules-the IHRA guidelines-that make it impossible to publicly question anything the Israeli government does to Palestinians without getting expelled from the party-just to prove that there's no issue there. And it was always ridiculous to act as though anti-Semitism was the most widespread form of bigotry in the UK when it wasn't, OR that most anti-Semitism was on the Left when everybody knew that it's actually almost exclusively confined to the far right.

If those within Labour who have spent every single day since the day Corbyn won the leadership in a landslide, had spent even 20% of the energy they've expended attacking their own leader, a leader who won the leadership not once, but TWICE by landslide margins, who led the party to a 1o percentage point gain in the 2017 election, a performance which would have guaranteed the full support of MPs until the next election for any other leader who had managed it, who brought hundreds of thousands of people into the party when membership had been declining consistently among all previous leaders-had they just said "ok, the leadership issue is settled, what matters now is uniting for victory and beating the Tory government", as they would have said, at that point, for ANY other leader, Labour would likely be ten to fifteen points ahead in the polls at this point. If Corbyn's leadership is currently unpopular, its because his own party's MPs, a group to whom Corbyn had never done anything to deserve their hatred, have spent his entire period as leader treating HIM, and not the Conservative Party, as the enemy to be crushed.

There was never any justification for the PLP's refusal to let its anti-Corbyn vendetta end.

There was never any justification for the anti-Semitism smear.

There was never any justification for Corbyn's vilification on the EU, when ANY possible leader, wanting to avoid fatally splitting his party, would have adopted the same policy-Harold Wilson did something similar on the Common Market issue as opposition leader and then when he returned to power after the two 1974 elections, whipping the party to oppose Common Market membership as opposition leader and only backing a referendum on the issue AFTER regaining power). If Corbyn had led with the hopeless fight to make the Tories call a second referendum, the Brexit Party wouldn't be at 37% in the polls for the EU elections-it would be at 47% or maybe 51%. Would ANY good have come of that?

North, if you're going to start parroting Nicky, you need to understand that he is acting mainly out of irrational personal hatred of Corbyn. Why anyone would despise the most decent person in English-speaking politics is a bonafide mystery, but it appears that Nicky has drunk the Blairite Koolaid and believes that Labour can only win with a smug, dismissive, militaristic reactionary as leader.

Labour doesn't have to put the unwinnable fight to force the Tories to hold a referendum which includes the option of reversing Brexit, a referendum in which it's just as likely that Brexit would win again as not, to win. What is needed is for the "center-left" to stop their relentless hate campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, a man who has done nothing to deserve the unending efforts to depose him as leader. Labour doesn't need to go back to Blairism to win, and it doesn't need to expel the Left again to win-in fact, there's no way a party with fewer members and supporters would do better at a general election than one with more.

What people like Nicky and the right-wing quasi-Tories hate is that Corbyn brought ideas and life back to the party. They dredged up the hopeless fight to stop Brexit-a fight that serves no good purpose at this point-solely to bludgeon Corbyn with, solely to dredge up the lie that he could have prevented the Leave victory in the referendum when they know there is nothing he could have done or said that WOULD have prevented it, when they know that there was nothing anybody could have said to persuade working-class people in the North and Northeast of England to vote for something which had left all of them out in the cold.

I would prefer to see something like the EU-IF that were something that admitted that it wasn't appropriate to restrict what governments could do on economic policy and on spending, if it were to admit that it's not its place as an institution to enforce perpetual neoliberalism and perpetual austerity.

But we all know the EU is never going to be an institution like that.

Soft Brexit would preserve what is good-the humane immigration policies, which are the only real positive feature of the EU at present-while getting rid of what is bad.

And it really doesn't matter who wins the EU elections, because the European Parliament is powerless and irrelevant. There was simply no reason for the Tories to even hold Euro-elections. If they weren't doing that, Farage wouldn't be making this horrible comeback.

The fact it, Corbyn couldn't center the unwinnable fight to force the Tories to hold a second referendum without abandoning all of his socialist principles. You can't hold any socialist or social democratic principles and agree to the EU's budget and nationalization constraints.

And it's not as though agreeing to stay in those constraints for the rest of eternity is the only way to avoid wars in Europe. You avoid wars in Europe by setting up arrangements that create goodwill and cooperation between nations-permanent austerity(which is what a balanced-budget requirement means)and permanent restrictions on nationalization should never have been part of the EU, and, while I respect those who call for a revolution within the EU and wish that were possible, the EU bureaucracy is entrenched and unchangeable and the EU as in institution is permanently unchangeable. It was designed to be unchangeable.

The real answer is building a new institution that is run from below, by those left out in the cold by the elitist and reactionary set-up of the EU.

The goal of creating peace between nations in Europe should never have been linked to the establishment of permanent Thatcherism-Reaganism OR the creation of a structure in which radical social and economic change are impossible.

It's not rocket science and has nothing to do with Corbyn. The people, in growing numbers now, realize a mistake was made in the first referendum, and they want another vote.

The Tories can't be made to call a second referendum though, and there's no way to FORCE them to do it. So what's the point?

If anybody was proposing any strategy at all to make the EU stop imposing perpetual austerity-which is what the mandatory balanced-budget and mandatory tax limits policies do-it might be different.

I wish the EU COULD be reformed. But it's now clear that there's no chance of that.

And there's nothing good in it that outweighs the damage it is doing in causing the growth of right-wing nationalist parties, parties which are only growing because of the perpetual austerity and perpetually increasing unemployment that EU economic policies make mandatory. Bertolt Brecht once wrote a song in which this line appears "food is the first thing/morals follow on". When people don't feel sure they will be able to buy food, and when this uncertainty is coupled with restrictions on those people being able to stand up to those who are causing the uncertainty, the fear can always be turned to hate by demagogues and always will be. The only way to fight war in Europe is to remove all austerity requirements and to end the assault on the social wage-or the social welfare state, as those who don't see social benefits as something a decent society just automatically provides call it in hopes of making the populace see it as a disgrace-and to fight, at the same time, to give working people what they should have had the whole time-democratic control of the workplace.

And it's not as though agreeing to stay in those constraints for the rest of eternity is the only way to avoid wars in Europe. You avoid wars in Europe by setting up arrangements that create goodwill and cooperation between nations-permanent austerity(which is what a balanced-budget requirement means)and permanent restrictions on nationalization should never have been part of the EU, and, while I respect those who call for a revolution within the EU and wish that were possible, the EU bureaucracy is entrenched and unchangeable and the EU as in institution is permanently unchangeable. It was designed to be unchangeable.

The dream of a unified Europe has been the dream of European elites going back thousands of years. The Roman Empire, Napolean, Adolf Hitler. The EU is just the latest in a long line of examples. What this dream has always run up against is the reality that Europe is a vast continent, with differences in languages, politics, cultures, customs, geography, and economy. Every one of these ideas has crashed and burned. The EU will be no different.

Ken, surely you must concede that at a certain point an unpopular leader should step aside for the good of his party.

I agree. Mulcair should have stepped down immediately on election night in 2015, but he had to be forced out by his party.

nicky wrote:

You don't seem to care that Corbyn's approval rating is abysmal.

Of course his approval rating is abysmal. He's a politician. How many politicians do you know of for whom this isn't the case?

nicky wrote:

But can you ignore actiual votes.

Yes you can. The second referendum crowd is ignoring the fact that the people already voted on Brexit.

nicky wrote:

How badly does Labobour need to do in the EU election for Coryn to step aside?

25%, 20%, 15%.

Third place? Fourth place?

Who cares about the European elections? It's not as if the EU Parliament has much power anyways?

Corbyn has already had an election where he turned what should have been a resounding majority for Theresa May into a hung Parliament. He deserves at least one more kick at the can. If he fails, that can be dealt with at the time.

This hatred for someone who has actually defied expectiations in one election is quite astounding. He's earned far more respect than Jagmeet Singh. I've been quite critical of him and believe he will lead the party to disaster, but I've also argued quite voiciferously that he should still stay on and lead the NDP into the next election anyways. Suppose the Labour Party takes your advice and then dumps Corbyn. Then the Conservatives decide to call a snap election before the new leader has a chance to get known, assemble a team, etc. Do you think Labour would necessarily do any better under those circumstances?

And it's not as though agreeing to stay in those constraints for the rest of eternity is the only way to avoid wars in Europe. You avoid wars in Europe by setting up arrangements that create goodwill and cooperation between nations-permanent austerity(which is what a balanced-budget requirement means)and permanent restrictions on nationalization should never have been part of the EU, and, while I respect those who call for a revolution within the EU and wish that were possible, the EU bureaucracy is entrenched and unchangeable and the EU as in institution is permanently unchangeable. It was designed to be unchangeable.

The dream of a unified Europe has been the dream of European elites going back thousands of years. The Roman Empire, Napolean, Adolf Hitler. The EU is just the latest in a long line of examples. What this dream has always run up against is the reality that Europe is a vast continent, with differences in languages, politics, cultures, customs, geography, and economy. Every one of these ideas has crashed and burned. The EU will be no different.

It seems to me that the history of the world has been the gradual and recently accelerating movement toward greater regional integration and globalization. I think the advent of the EU is just a part of this ongoing process that has recently created institutions like the UN, G10, G20, G40, World Court, WTO, IMF, NAFTA, etc.... I think the modern world is rapidly getting more integrated and isolation and xenophobia are no longer a viable option.

Ken, surely you must concede that at a certain point an unpopular leader should step aside for the good of his party.

I agree. Mulcair should have stepped down immediately on election night in 2015, but he had to be forced out by his party.

nicky wrote:

You don't seem to care that Corbyn's approval rating is abysmal.

Of course his approval rating is abysmal. He's a politician. How many politicians do you know of for whom this isn't the case?

nicky wrote:

But can you ignore actiual votes.

Yes you can. The second referendum crowd is ignoring the fact that the people already voted on Brexit.

nicky wrote:

How badly does Labobour need to do in the EU election for Coryn to step aside?

25%, 20%, 15%.

Third place? Fourth place?

Who cares about the European elections? It's not as if the EU Parliament has much power anyways?

Corbyn has already had an election where he turned what should have been a resounding majority for Theresa May into a hung Parliament. He deserves at least one more kick at the can. If he fails, that can be dealt with at the time.

This hatred for someone who has actually defied expectiations in one election is quite astounding. He's earned far more respect than Jagmeet Singh. I've been quite critical of him and believe he will lead the party to disaster, but I've also argued quite voiciferously that he should still stay on and lead the NDP into the next election anyways. Suppose the Labour Party takes your advice and then dumps Corbyn. Then the Conservatives decide to call a snap election before the new leader has a chance to get known, assemble a team, etc. Do you think Labour would necessarily do any better under those circumstances?

There is no one to Corbyn's right-and let's face it, what nicky wants is a leader sharply to Corbyn's right, someone resembling Mulcair in his sneering hatred of the left-who could ever be an effective leader of the party, because none of the anti-Corbynites could ever be capable of generating any enthusiasm from the base and the electorate OR of offering any clear alternative that could connect with anyone.

John McDonnell is essentially the only figure at this point who'd have any chance of being an effective successor to Corbyn-putting in a moderate instead would instantly lose Labour the votes of everybody under 40-who would possible keep the party on the socialist, anti-austerity, antiwar path it needs to be on to win.

Nobody who would still defend the Iraq war, and nobody who went along with the party whip when Harriet Harman insisted that the PLP start abstaining-i.e., giving support to the Tories on-the even more savage cuts Theresa May was imposing on the pitiful remnants of the social welfare state, and no one who would defend the Blairite practice of building connections between the party and corporations could possibly be capable of leading a party which has an ethical obligation, on first principles, to work night and day to remove every vestige of Thatcherism from the UK.

Labour never needs to go back to being MORE militarist than the Tories-or to pretending, as Hilary Benn does, that bombing Syria and inevitably killing tens of thousands of innocent Syrian civilians, is somehow a form of "internationalist solidarity".

And Labour never again needs to be led by anyone who sees internal party democracy as something to be absolutely wiped out.

Anyone Nicky would approve of as leader would do all of those things. And then nicky would come back after that and STILL claim the party was different than the Tories-even though doing those things wouldn't gain Labour a single vote.

Corbyn never deserved to be unrelentingly hounded for the past four years. His supporters never deserved to be accused of anti-Semitism. And the truth is Labour would be having trouble in the Euro-elections no matter what position it took on the hopeless fight to make the Tories call a second referendum when everybody knows they can't BE made to call a second referendum. Labour would be in exactly the same position in the Euro-polls if it was leading with a demand for that which can't be.

There was no reason for anybody to whip people up in the UK over an issue like this when nothing can be changed.

And it's not as though agreeing to stay in those constraints for the rest of eternity is the only way to avoid wars in Europe. You avoid wars in Europe by setting up arrangements that create goodwill and cooperation between nations-permanent austerity(which is what a balanced-budget requirement means)and permanent restrictions on nationalization should never have been part of the EU, and, while I respect those who call for a revolution within the EU and wish that were possible, the EU bureaucracy is entrenched and unchangeable and the EU as in institution is permanently unchangeable. It was designed to be unchangeable.

The dream of a unified Europe has been the dream of European elites going back thousands of years. The Roman Empire, Napolean, Adolf Hitler. The EU is just the latest in a long line of examples. What this dream has always run up against is the reality that Europe is a vast continent, with differences in languages, politics, cultures, customs, geography, and economy. Every one of these ideas has crashed and burned. The EU will be no different.

It seems to me that the history of the world has been the gradual and recently accelerating movement toward greater regional integration and globalization. I think the advent of the EU is just a part of this ongoing process that has recently created institutions like the UN, G10, G20, G40, World Court, WTO, IMF, NAFTA, etc.... I think the modern world is rapidly getting more integrated and isolation and xenophobia are no longer a viable option.

And after 2012 it was assumed that racism and homophobia was a spent force in the US and that the country had permanently turned its back on old prejudices. How does that work?

Did you know that Germany was hailed as a beacon of prospertity and social progress in Europe throughout the 1920s? That is the myth of progress right there. Societies do not "progress" from a starting point to an end point. They turn in cycles.

And after 2012 it was assumed that racism and homophobia was a spent force in the US and that the country had permanently turned its back on old prejudices. How does that work?

Did you know that Germany was hailed as a beacon of prospertity and social progress in Europe throughout the 1920s? That is the myth of progress right there. Societies do not "progress" from a starting point to an end point. They turn in cycles.

I agree that progress is not linear but I would say that human progress has generally headed upwards with continuous ups and downs. In the grandest scheme of things I think this whole universe will eventually end and a new cycle will begin again. Also, I think 3rd Reich Germany would support Brexit.

I guess by your logic , Josh, Canada should still have conscription, having voted for it in the 1944 referendum.

it doesn't matter that times change or that the electorate might change its view or that the ramifications of the vote subsequently become clear.

why is it undemocratic to let the public have a second vote? If they confirm the first vote, fine. If they reverse it why is that undemocratic?

you seem to want a hard Brexit, even though that was scarcely implicit in the first vote. Wouldn’t it be undemocratic to ram that down the public’s throat even though roughly 55% now want to stay in Europe?

Not an issue of "staying in Europe," but of staying in the EU. Not the same thing.

The question was stay or leave. Pretty clear what leave means. As for a revote, are you saying that a no vote on a particular Brexit plan would mean a vote to remain? And I'd agree to a second remain or leave vote just as long as a vote to remain has the same force and effect as the 2016 vote. Which means no force and effect at all apparently. Or a remain vote would lead to a tie breaking third vote. Best 2 out of 3.

The poll there proves Labour wouldn't gain from doing what you want and putting the pointless obsession about Brexit over everything else. The people who are obsessed with that wouldn't vote for anyone but the LibDems or Greens no matter what. And it isn't possible to center the unwinnable fight for a second referendum AND fight the Tory austerity agenda at the same time.

There was no reason for there to even be another Euro-election in the UK. Were there not, Farage would be on the ash heap of history.

The only reason you're beating Corbyn over the head on Brexit is that you hate Corbyn period-you've always despised him for proving that the leader of a left-of-center party doesn't HAVE to be an arrogant dismissive elitist who sees left activists as the enemy. The fact that you were demanding his resignation DURING the 2017 election, when he had Labour dramatically surging in the polls, proves that your vendetta towards the man is totally irrational and unjustified. There'd be no reason for Labour to even exist anymore if it went back to being as far to the right as you want it to be. There'd be no argument to voting for the party if it endorsed bombing Syria, was continuing to abstain on the Tory cuts and the benefits sanctions as the leader before Corbyn had it doing-abstentions which proved that a Labour government under that sort of leadership would never be significantly different than a Tory government on anything-and there'd be no reason to vote for the party if it were STILL led by the kind of people who think that joining corporate boards and becoming a millionaire or billionaire after leaving politics is not a betrayal of all Labour principles.

Labour lost the two elections before Corbyn on EXACTLY the sort of leadership you'd prefer. It would lose under a reactionary like Keir Starmer or Jess Phillips. It would lose if Blair renounced his peerage and came back-or if Tom Mulcair took up British citizenship and somehow became Corbyn's replacement. No non-leftists in the Labour Party has anything to offer in terms of leadership material

That poll proves that Labour would lose as many votes to the Brexit Party if it centered the unwinnable fight to stop Brexit as it temporarily is over not doing so.

There's no position on the issue Labour could take that would have them doing any better in the polls. And it goes without saying that going back to Blairism wouldn't help either, because all the hundreds of thousands of people who've joined the party under Corbyn would go, they'd take millions of voters with them, and nobody would come in from anywhere else to take up the slack in terms of membership figures OR popular support.

The other factor here is that virtually all the Labour Euro-candidates are right-wing anti-Corbynites who are likely deliberately crashing Labour's chances in this contest because they care more about restoring Blairism than working to help their own party.

I would think the objective would be to win the next British election.

Labour has seriously dropped in the polls. The Conservatives are probably about to get a major re-boot with a Leadership contest to replace Prime Minister May. Add to that, the damage, the job losses, that are being created in the UK by the Brexit situation, and the growing Brexit unpopularity. And British voters already know to vote right-wing if they want Brexit. The right-wing were the ones who put Brexit on the political map. This is a golden opportunity for Labour to seize the moment, win the election, and put a stop to the Brexit nitemare. But that will never happen if Labour does not oppose Brexit.

I think that Labour is taking the correct stance. I am not big on a second referendum as in a binary choice. We have already seen that mess that created the first time around. Instead I think that the next general election should be the followup referendum. People should choose the party and just as importantly the candidates that represent their interests. The next Parliament would then deal with the issue having a mandate from the people to decide the details not just the binary question.

In this context labour is well situated. It has voting blocks that represent the divisions with the party. Yes the Blairites are overly represented - but you can't have everything and their power is slowly collapsing. The Party has managed to stay on the fence on the issue to the chagrin of hardline supporters on either side. If it can get the public behind its large tent role it could come out of the election as the only party willing to bridge the gap between two almost equal sides. Now may be the time for everyone to take a little water with their wine and Labour may be the only party capable of getting from here to there.

Corbyn’s Babble apologists will say the election is irrelevant, the result would somehow have been worse if Corbyn had a coherent position, that no other Labour leader could have done better, that The Labour MEPs all lost because they were all reactionaries, and that Corbyn would have triumphed were it not for the machinations of the evil Blairites.

Corbyn’s Babble apologists will say the election is irrelevant, the result would somehow have been worse if Corbyn had a coherent position, that no other Labour leader could have done better, that The Labour MEPs all lost because they were all reactionaries, and that Corbyn would have triumphed were it not for the machinations of the evil Blairites.

And of course Corbyn is not only blameless but saintly.

Do I have this right Ken and Josh?

What I'd ACTUALLY say is this:

1)There was no position Labour could take on Brexit that would unify the party.

2)Since virtually every Labour candidate in this election is a Blairite-the defeat is actually a defeat for the Blairites/anti-Corbynites;

3)If Corbyn was centering Remain-and Labour's support levels were the same, as they would be-or even if they were slightly higher-you would find something ELSE to attack Corbyn about. You proved how patholigical and irrational your hatred of the man is by bringing in the anti-Semitism slur even though Corbyn has done everything he could to put that to rest.

4)I don't think Corbyn is flawless. As far as I know CORBYN doesn't think he's flawless. It's just that it could only be a tragedy to force him out and move the party sharply to the right as you want, and it could only be a tragedy to expel all leftists again and go back to Labour not disagreeing with the Tories on any major issues again as it was in 1997. This isn't 1997. If the voters wanted Labour to blur differences, if they wanted the party to have no internal party democracy, if they wanted it to be more militaristic than the Tories and pretend that "humanitarian intervention" was a thing, that was THEN-that was twenty-two years ago.

Labour has often been in the lead under Corbyn. It's in the lead in most polls for the next general election.

It's just that the Blairites, for no valid reason, wouldn't accept that Brexit was settled and that soft Brexit was the best that could be done, and then invented the "People's Vote" canard just to force Corbyn to drive all the Leave voters out of the party. It's only because of that that Farage is making a comeback when the UK could have been forever free of him. And it's only because of that that Labour's poll support has dropped.

The voters aren't saying they don't want a decent, honest person as leader.

They aren't saying they don't want Labour to be for peace and against austerity.

This situation exists solely because the Labour Right stirred up the delusion that Brexit could be stopped-and still won't stop spreading the lie that Corbyn could have stopped the Leave victory but simply refused to-just to prevent Labour from unifying.

That is the only reason this is happening.

And there was never anything Corbyn could have said, during the referendum, that could have turned a Leave victory into a Remain victory. There were no honest words he could have uttered that could have changed a single working-class mind in the North of England.

Corbyn is a mortal, fallible human being. Basically, you hate him because he didn't LIE during the referendum and because he didn't adopt party rules which would have made it impossible for anyone to make ANY public criticisms of what the Israeli government does to Palestinians. Those two things are what this is about.

Well, here's the thing: If he HAD lied in the referendum, and if he had adopted the IHRA "guidelines", Corbyn would have forfeited any right to claim to be a decent human being working for a better world. That's what you hate about the man: that he rejects the idea that leading a left-of-center party means being a cynical, arrogant hack.